In May 2007 eBay acquired website recommendation engine StumbleUpon for $75 million. Now, less than a year and a half later, they’re trying to unload it according to a source with knowledge of the sale process.
eBay has hired Deutsche Bank to find the right buyer, says our source, but the asking price is unknown. It’s not certain that eBay will be able to sell it for the price they paid - In July StumbleUpon had 1.3 million worldwide visitors and 25 million page views. Twelve months earlier the service attracted 4.4 million visitors and 31 million page views (Comscore). Google trends shows stagnation over the last year as well.
Registered users have continued to rise steadily, however. The service had 5 million in April 2008. As of this evening, the site shows 6,003,763, a 20% rise in less than 5 months.
gotta love stumble
http://cashtutor.blogspot.com
I just actually started using StumbleUpon a month or so ago (i know i know) but I find it quite entertaining to take an hour or so of my day every couple days and just STUMBLE. I’ve come across some pretty interesting stuff and havent even started to hit repeats yet. My site at http://www.sellingcr.com receives all kinds of “stumble traffic” which is nice. I bet they get a pretty penny and even maybe…double their dough. Double dough!
Peace.
Though I loves it, SU’s days seem numbered. Having finally played around with Twine, the value proposition of the semantic + bookmarking sites seems to be the wave of the near-future, in which case it’s a smart move to unload such properties now if you can’t bolster them with super smart backends. It’d be a smart move for someone to pick up the SU brand at a reasonable cost, then add the brains. SUv2.
The problem is you NEED the stupid toolbar to use Stumble (from what I remember…maybe I have it wrong) AND a Stumble account…I hate having my browser cluttered w/ 3rd party toolbars.
I wonder how many potential users were turned off when they learned they’d have to install a toolbar (I usually associated toolbars with spyware/adware because for a long time that’s all they were used for)…
I think you meant “our source” not “out source”.
StumbleUpon is plagued with spam and advertisers. Good sites are few and far between. I’m surprised 1.3 million people still use.
Further proof that Ebay is in trouble. Never really could get a grasp of why they purchased it or Skype. GL to the buyers.
So it was bad for them to own SU, and now it’s bad that they’re selling them? Either way, EBay loses.
Don’t know why they bought Skype? Bet you pay $79.99 per month for your copper wire phone service! I take my phone with me on my laptop and connect for pennies and use my business line where ever I am. Not to mention I dial in to their system when on my cell phone to reduce long distance charges. Best communication tool I know of since the cell phone and instant messaging!
So what’s the consensus, selling less than 75m? I’ve used SU for 2+ years but not terribly active. Great traffic driver but for how long?
hopefully the stumbleupon guys buy it for a song and resell it again like one of my favorite startup tales, webshots
My son was one of the three original owners and creators from Calgary. He was very pleased in that he thought about 50 mill was about the proper value at the time of the sale and that at 75 mill ebay was just throwing some of their money around.
Although he has been am employee of ebay since the sale as a major keyholder/administer he has no desire to re-purchase.
As much as the “Stumblers” hate to admit it Stumble Upon has stagnated and the original owners are clearly aware of that fact.
the domain name was enough to turn me away.
OpinionLocator.com
At least theirs sounds a lot better than all those domain names that you own.
Key lesson here for startups - don’t get greedy.
Sell, if someone wants to buy you.
Umm, how does that lesson apply here? I scoff at your blanket assertions.
because Stumbleupon made the right move to sell - it tanked afterwards…duhhh
1.3 million worldwide visitors? - that can’t be right. Go up an order of magnitude to 10.3 million visitors and you might be on the right track.
In ONE month.
I hardly think 10+ million unique visitors are using Stumble each month. You’d hear more about it.
You’re linking to Google Trends for Searches, not for Websites. Here is the correct link: http://trends.google.com/websi.....m&sa=N
fixed, thanks.
Stagnation? Looks like a sharp decline to me. It appears that Ebay has a bit of buyer’s remorse.
Jason Kiesel
Founder & CEO
http://www.freedomspeaks.com
Makes you wonder if they’re thinning themselves into something specific.
Also, Google Trends is quite inaccurate from my experience and you need to know if StumbleUpon’s toolbar is counted in their traffic before making any determinations on their decline or stagnation.
Yes that is what happens when you operate in a competitive market and don’t focus on your operations which you are known for1
EBAY is getting wiser… they are selling hodgepodge things they were doing instead of making their services better… i hope they have sold skype too !
I like SU, is cool and has a great community. Too bad that eBay has no idea what to do with hot start-ups.
Their reliance on the toolbar is probably the #1 reason for SU’s stagnated growth. Good luck trying to get Facebook sized audiences to even understand what the toolbar does, let alone install it. And how do you do ads on the toolbar without looking cheap like Yahoo or AOL messenger? The website hasn’t been given a facelift since the eBay aquisition, either. It’s confusing and a real put-off for would-be new users. Moral of the story: stop playing with toolbars, start focusing on the website.
I absolutely agree. I love stumble, but people just dont like to ‘install’ a what? a plugin? whuh huh?
The dips in the Stumbleupon traffic tally up with data I have from other sites and correspond to the changes in the way Google handle tag pages in their index for certain sites.
Whilst Google have given indication that they don’t want search results indexed, tag pages are something different, though I am not sure the determining factor should be how much data they mashup from other sources.
WP.com so far doesn’t seem to be affected in the same way as other services, and Crunchbase is going strong.
It would be nice for Google to provide some more guidelines on this - I have nudged them in the past.
SU was a good discovery for me.. but i stopped using it completely a while ago. a users homepage/profile is the messiest place on the internet. i cant even go through my library of bookmarks/stumbles without having to spend a few minutes and clicking around. annoying as hell! very poo UI on the destination site..
Why did they buy it in the first place?
Michael, Stop spreading these rumours. Digg and Skype are still unsold. Now you are after stumbleupon. Wheres your magic touch gone
This is funny! I still don’t really get why Ebay would acquire a company like StumbleUpon. The recommendations are for websites, not for products that are sold in Ebay. Anyways, at least now Ebay realizes its mistake — good for them! I like Stumbleupon, but the only hassle with that is to install a toolbar and it’s pretty much used for fun mostly. However, I like Cruxle (www.cruxle.com) for entertainment recommendations. It’s a great website if you want to discover your favorite TVShows, Movies, Music, Books, Videos … Though the UI is not that great, I love their contents and functionalities. Hopefully, they will improve their UI soon
stumbled!
It really is a novelty service. I got tired of it after a few months.
how is it a great traffic driver?
How was this business supposed to fit in with ebay?
Data mining and recommendation engine technology. I guess they thought people would stumble ebay listings, which just isn’t how the service is used.
it drives traffic if your lucky. it all depends on the type of post that you write but i have had a steady stream of traffic using SU. But you get even better traffic if somebody stumbled it other then you.
eBay should sell Skype to Google. I need free desktop sharing from Skype.
I reviewed a nice little tool Mikogo yesterday and they only yesterday launched a Skype extra for free screen sharing and it really works pretty well. That may be just what you need.
Is there a way to SU can make the toolbar optional? I remember thinking that their service was “COOL” but then I was turned off by the mandatory toolbar. If they could offer the same service but eliminate toolbar, I think exponential growth from their current number is still possible.
Jippidy.com - Video Yellow Pages
How would they offer the service without the toolbar? SU isn’t a destination site, and one must be able to interact while on other sites, so a toolbar is the only way (unless you’d rather a greasemonkey script).
Most firefox users don’t have problems installing toolbars, and when you are not using it, just remove it from the View.
BestMatch technology should be bundled with the sale of SU. We need Classic eBay back!
I used SU for months, when I switched to chrome I realised how much time I actually wasted looking at not much.
I hope stumble does not change the way it operates…I adore stumble and get loads of traffic from it……
StumbleUpon is a great tool for finding sites, and I used to use it fairly often. Recently, it has been full of advertisers and spam. My use (and apparently most of the registered users) has declined lately. I’m not entirely certain whether this is because the novelty factor has worn off, or that I’m simply not finding as many great sites as I used to. It’s probably a combination of both, along with my annoyance at the heavy advertising that is plaguing StumbleUpon
Mike, you’re thinking of SU in the wrong context. There’s not necessarily a ‘destination’ like digg or reddit. People mainly just setup their profile and start stumbling, without going to su.com. So measuring how many cilcks the toolbar gets each day is more accurate of usage. I would imagine it’s in the hundreds of millions considering how much traffic comes from SU. Registered user base is also a key metric. Plus its the only social linking site that actually brings in revenue from content sites, and not just display ads. Brilliant if you ask me.
If you read the article, you will see that its a decline in growth, not in users. In other words, the number of users is still going up — just not as fast as it used to. 10-20% annual growth is still very reasonable, for any business. I don’t see how any company would expect to maintain 50%+ annual growth over a long period.
eBay was stupid to buy Stumble. It doesn’t fit with what they do and now they’ll lose a few million dollars learning their lesson.
Bookmarking is in stagnation so proper sites(even leaders like StumbleUpon and Delicious) are with problems too http://tinyurl.com/4zfqpp.
@Loic There are *extremely* loyal SU users esp. in photography & art & design. It’s a *visual* search engine. I always find something interesting every time I visit.
But, just like any social site, the more you use it (friend folks, add tags and topics and groups), the more you will find it useful, informative and fun!
Come find me there: http://barbarakb.stumbleupon.com
well the creators got 75 million out of it. so ebay is the one who looks foolish.
For the last several months, we have received more incoming link traffic to Rocketboom from SumbleUpon than from any other site, by far.
stumbleupon referrers have dropped to about 25% of previous over the past 12 months. don’t know why. sites get around 25k visits/day.
GO Digg!
eBay is crazy. StumbleUpon is the most valuable piece of data available to any search engine. I hope Google doesn’t finally get its hands on it.
SU is the best way to filter spam and provide search personalization available. Furthermore SU is a toolbar with widespread adoption, and toolbar users are by far the most valuable. It also has a smart revenue model.
I agree that eBay and SU aren’t a natural fit, but I still say its an extremely valuable property.
they do have a unique experience — even it is getting stale. hopefully whomever purchases them can inject some new ideas and innovation.
http://web-poet.com/2008/09/19/tripping-thumbs/
Ebay shouldn’t bought SU at the first place, 2 different company with different marketing doesn’t make sense.
Perhaps a buy Skype get Stumbleupon free?
I think StumbleUpon is a great site and a great concept. The whole internet scene needs more Discovery rather than only Search.
Go StumbleUpon, whoever the owner will be. Anyway, in time of economic turmoil it won’t be easy to find a buyer quick unless ebay will accept a fairly low price, so SU management might take over… they just need to find a Private Equity fund to back them and make a Management Buy Out. I’d think about it if I were in their shoes.
Stumbleupon is losing ground and viewers because it’s nothing but stumbled blogs who are trying to get traffic money.
StumbleUpon is a great tool
getting bored…too many repeats